People accumulate large collections of digitized personal memories (e.g., pictures, video, audio etc.) through a combination of digital photography and digitization of legacy photographs/videos. Currently, a basic thumbnail browser presents the user with a chronological ordering of the collection with a small amount of hierarchical structure, based on when the photos were uploaded and/or scanned in. Newer algorithms use time information provided by the camera to create a true time-based hierarchical structure. It is generally accepted that collections would be easier to use, and more valuable to the users, if the photos were also organized and/or annotated in a way that reflected their content.
One problem is that users are not able to view or present photos in an organized way. For example, if a person wanted to show someone all of their travel pictures, they would have to manually go through and select the travel pictures from the collection, which could be very large. This process can be very time consuming and makes it difficult to enjoy the memories in a personalized way without much user work.